In steel fab you end up building a lot of random things. When you need something to can carry significant weight, last forever, or in general versatility, steel often gets the call. This was a unique steel fab project. The mission. Protect the couch. Sometimes you need something just to keep your couch in one piece.
We have two new kittens and they live up to their names. Mischief and Calamity. They are super cute, and they are basically inseparable. They play, roam, fight, eat, and sleep with each other nearly constant. Calamity is so cute in fact she made it onto a cat calendar. I didn’t know it was a thing either.
The two cats resting up to prepare for nightly hi-jinks.
While partying all night, they also terrorize the couch something awful. Now, I wasn’t smart buying a light colored couch with two young children (human children). It’s just dumb.
Secondly, its not rational to entertain two young cats and expect your couch to be untouched. They were absolutely dialed in the outside edge of the sectional. Either one of the two was clawing on it every 30 – 45 minutes nearly round the clock.
I didn’t spritz them with the squirt bottle. I didn’t try to punt them across the room either. I made them stop of course. I even lectured them on the negative impact they were having on the furniture in general. The talks didn’t seem to help.
Terrorist cats? Exploded couch? Up armor the couch you say?
Cat Guard
I started with an experiment. I tried to use actual shadows to create an image. I learned a little bit and created a few more ideas in the process.
I did a fair amount of testing and I’ll use this process in the future. I choose not to use this for this project. I wanted to keep this simple and just make a dang couch guard. I drew the plant fill by hand using reference pictures for inspiration. I then uploaded that into simulation. Of course, it isn’t my couch in the simulation, it is there to help the visualization.
I realize it the point of simulating things is to see what they’ll look like. It still makes me smirk to see things in real life looking exactly as portrayed in 3D. Anyway, this equates to as much an art project as a fabrication one. I have a little more time in the drawing than I do the steel fab.
Steel Fab
Aside from the detail work of the flowers and leaves. The build was very simple. One large piece of steel cut to dimension with two bends in it. This is what gives us the large C shape that hugs the couch. There are two base plates added underneath to keep it supported and snug to the couch.
We’ve got a dynamic household around here. Anticipating life’s complexities and the occasional spill I opted to paint this. Its coated in a water based automotive sealer when I need a little more durability. Createx stuff has been pretty good to me. This is what I use here. Like raw hot rolled anywhere it absorbs dark light. It looks black but in the sun its more a medium blue tone.
The above three pictures of it are already clear coated in the photo. It’s hard to tell but it has a nice even sheen and looks a touch monochromatic. The lighting will effect its perceived color quite a lot. Anything from the near black in our room to some level of reflective in the sun or bright light.
It was a quick project to protect a small investment. It won’t save the couch from life, but it has already saved that corner from an early death. It took a little longer to write and edit this page as it did to build the cat guard. Unfortunately, that isn’t an exaggeration. I am a fast builder and a slow writer/editor.